Author: Joonseog Ko is lecturer in the Department of English Language and Literature, Chosun University, 501-759 Korea.
Dongyul Cho is professor in the Department of English Language and Literature, Chosun University, 501-759 Korea.

This paper is an attempt to discuss Unity of Being in Yeats’s imagery of
dance in his early works. Yeats’s imagery of dance can be understood more
accurately as we perceive that “Rosa Alchemica”’ narrator performs an immortal
dance with his Daimon. Yeats’s dance represents several different levels of recurring
experience: 1) a symbol evoking a reverie, 2) having a dream, 3) finding an
antithetical mask, 4) performing an immortal dance with Daimon in wearing one’s
mask, 5) returning to the real world after waking from one’s reverie or dream. In
this circulation, a dancer integrates dance and movement, body and spirit, self and
soul into oneness, and wholly eradicating greed, anger, ignorance. At last she
achieves Unity of Being by attaining consciousness like Buddhist Nirvana. In short,
the imagery of dance is one of the various ways to achieve Unity of Being. And
this becomes the very road to the top of Mt. Meru.